Internal Controls and Performance of Public Financial Management in Second Northern Uganda Social Action Fund

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to establish the relationship between internal controls and performance of public financial management of the Second Northern Uganda Social Action Fund (NUSAF2). The problem at hand was that there were still performance gaps in NUSAF2 (Auditor General, 2013). He further showed that a mischarge of shs. 19,059,510 meant for National Social Security fund (NSSF) employer contribution was charged to contract staff salaries, funds amounting to Shs. 153,673,363 advanced to staff to execute project activities lacked supporting documents and there was lack of trainings assessment. The key objectives were: to examine the relationship between control activities and performance of public financial management of NUSAF2, to assess the relationship between of monitoring activities and performance of public financial management of NUSAF2, and to analyze the relationship between risk assessment and performance of public financial management of NUSAF2.The results of the study were intended to improve stakeholder’s knowledge about the extent to which internal controls affect the performance of public financial management in NUSAF2.The research adopted a case study design and employed both qualitative and quantitative methods. The research was conducted on 40 respondents which included top management and staff using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), statistics were generated from the collected data, analyzed using descriptive statistics and Pearson Correlation Coefficient to generate empirical findings. The study found out that control activities contribute much on the performance of public financial management where the results revealed 100 % that NUSAF2 undertakes strong control activities , Monitoring activities results revealed 97.1% that the project is generally monitored and lastly the risk assessments revealed 80% general risk assessment. So internal controls affects performance of public financial management. It was concluded that effective internal control is crucial to superior performance of public financial management in NUSAF2.